


Until I Wake Your Ghost

by philomel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, First Time, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:49:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philomel/pseuds/philomel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassie hunts for Dean and finds Lisa in the shadows.</p><p><span class="small">Spoilers through 6.21.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Until I Wake Your Ghost

She says she doesn’t know Dean Winchester. But you know she does.

That’s why you’re here.

You’ve followed fifteen false leads and six good ones down a back-and-forth trail that has finally led you here. To Lisa Braeden’s house.

Lisa Braeden can prove that Dean Winchester is alive.

____________________

It was almost two full years after you last saw Dean that you heard about his death.

A ruptured gas main razing a police station in Colorado. Of all the freaky things that could have killed Dean, this actually seemed unreal.

You cried that whole weekend, longer than you’d cried for your father. Because, this time, there was no one to share your loss, no one to look after but yourself. This time, you had nothing to keep you busy, no mission, no secrets to unearth, no truth to find, no work to do. The newspaper had gone under, and you were still hunting for something else.

It was while checking out a potential job in Colorado Springs that you discovered the news.

Dean Winchester, deceased. Sam too.

You already knew the Winchesters were fugitives. You’d seen footage of the standoff at the bank in Milwaukee, heard about the prison break from Green River, found a laundry list of crimes in the police files you’d accessed. But the cops and feds didn’t know the truth about Sam and Dean, so you didn’t believe most of what was said about them.

Their deaths were even harder to believe. With no remains, you considered the possibility that they’d gotten away. But scarcely any remains had been left after the blast. Two missing bodies, you could buy — especially those two. But all the rest? Barely identifiable parts and pieces. No one had time to react. No one had gotten out fast enough. Not even the Winchesters could outrun something like that. It stretched plausibility past the breaking point. And your breaking point was a tough one to reach, tougher still after Dean had come into your life and expanded your definition of what was possible.

It was impossible to think of Dean being gone. Not gone from your town, or gone from your life like he had been for a couple of years. But gone, just gone.

That’s when you broke down.

All you could do was hope it had been quick enough that he and Sam hadn’t suffered. There was nothing else to do.

You couldn’t bring back the dead.

____________________

Then you saw a ghost.

It was a little over a year ago, and you were investigating a series of disappearances in St. Louis, heading to interview a promising source for your article. You rounded the corner, and there it was. Right there on Olive Street, in broad daylight, you saw it materialize from the same building you were heading toward.

You saw the ghost of Sam Winchester.

You followed him for five blocks until you lost him. But he didn’t vanish. He was solid, even bumped into people on the sidewalk. He’d simply gotten ahead of you, a throng of school kids getting in your way. No, ghosts did not shove through crowds and get cursed at for rude behavior. Even if they did, they certainly did not pose as FBI agents and sit down for coffee and questioning at the same table where you would be sitting not long afterward, asking the same kinds of questions, looking into the same mystery.

Still, you read up on doppelgangers, just in case. You revisited the last known location of each missing person. You anticipated new locations, drew up a map, stepped up the pace of your investigation, hoping you’d cross paths with him again and verify what you had seen.

Then, one day, the missing came back. All of them. And the disappearances stopped.

That was when you knew.

It was Sam. Not a ghost, not a double.

Sam was alive. Which meant: the news you had read all those years ago was wrong. The death reports of Sam and Dean Winchester were wrong.

Of all the secrets you could ever uncover, Cassie Robinson, this could be the one that made you.

Made you what? You weren’t sure. If Sam was alive, Dean might be too. And maybe, maybe this time....

Maybe you were digging up something that deserved to stay buried.

You’d mourned and moved on. Keep moving, you told yourself.

But you needed to know. You needed to be sure.

____________________

In Cicero, Indiana, you found your first sign of Dean.

Sources pointed you to a vacant house. Paperwork gave you the last owner’s name: Lisa Braeden. Neighbors told you about the woman herself, about her son Ben. They gossiped about the man she lived with, out of wedlock. _But he was so good with the boy, like a father,_ they said. His name was Dean.

A family, a full-time construction job, a house in the suburbs. It didn’t sound like Dean Winchester.

You wondered if it was another false lead. Or, if it was him, you reasoned that maybe his job had taken the form of a long con, that maybe he was hiding out with this Lisa and Ben.

However, their sudden departure from Cicero, not long after the people across the street were found dead, with no goodbyes, no notice, no moving vans seen out front, and the late-night rattling of a muscle car the last anyone heard from them — that sounded like the Dean you knew.

____________________

Yet Lisa claims she knows nothing.

You wonder if she’s covering for Dean. Or if he ditched her and the boy and she doesn’t want to talk about him, is pretending he never existed.

You’ve tried that technique. It didn’t work.

Lisa’s son mentions _a_ Dean — a man who visited them in the hospital when they had a car accident, who told them he was the other driver and apologized for what he’d done. But the insurance that covered their repairs was under the name Adam Johnson. And the man from the hospital? They never saw him again.

Doubt creeps up on you.

The story should sound like a lie, but it doesn’t. You usually read people so well, but now you’re not sure. The other name throws you off. You know about Dean’s aliases: unsubtle references to movies and rock music. But this name matches no one in particular, no one who makes you think of Dean. This sounds normal.

Somehow, though, sitting here on the couch of a woman who looks at you sincerely when she says she doesn’t know the man you’re looking for, while you sip her iced tea, wishing it was sweeter, and watch her boy bow his head over his Nintendo DS — you feel so far from normal.

So far from Dean.

The grief surges up, unexpected, knocking you over, so you fold over, arms limp on your knees. You let your hair cover your eyes, hoping it’s enough to hide you.

Dean’s not dead, you remind yourself. Probably, possibly. But it feels like he is, all over again.

Lisa’s hand is on your back, rubbing circles that somehow bring the air back into your lungs, the circulation slowing and evening out.

By the time you look up, the boy is gone. Going, what boys do.

But Lisa is still here, brushing back your hair to reveal your wet eyes. You try not to blink. You’ve held back the tears, felt the welling and the quiver, but kept them at bay.

Then she smiles. A crooked smile that doesn’t make you feel better, but doesn’t make you feel alone.

Your eyelids flutter closed and the tears spill out. Just two lines trickling down, winding away from the inner corners. But it feels like everything has run out. You’ve held back so much, put too much hope into this. It’s made you tired; you understand that. But that awareness doesn’t help. It doesn’t make the feelings go away.

Lisa takes away the tears. You barely feel her touch, so light up over your cheeks, like she could reverse their tracks.

You wish you could reverse yours: backtrack to that day you saw Sam in St. Louis. Go even further. How far is far enough? You don’t regret the time you spent with Dean. But you realize you can never revisit that, do it over, or even erase it. There’s no transcript, no video, no hissing audio from a tiny tape recording to play back those moments when you were together. When your life intersected with his. Fighting or fucking or just sharing the same space for a little while.

They were only moments, but they re-routed so much of your life.

With Dean, it’s like living as a mayfly. You get a few days, then you’re done for.

Done? No, you tell yourself, no.

You should spend a few more days in Battle Creek, see if Lisa will open up to you. But you need to go to your motel room now, collect yourself and come back strong.

So when Lisa invites you to stay for supper, you say, _no_. You say, _thank you_.

But she is just as stubborn as you are.

____________________

There’s spaghetti and wine, and Coke for the kid, although Lisa says it will rot his teeth. His argument is that if they get a special drink, he should get one too, and you can’t fault him for that.

It’s good. The kind of home-cooked meal you haven’t had since you last visited your mom. It fills up that empty place in your gut, fends off the headache that followed your crying.

Distracted by food and drink and small talk, you start to forget about why you came here. You feel better.

You offer to do the dishes, but Lisa doesn’t let you. Grabbing the towel, you dry them before she tells you that you can’t do that either. But she tells you anyway. Laughing, she grabs for the towel. You hold on.

It rips. Not in half, but halfway through. And you try to say you’re sorry, start to say you didn’t mean to. But all you can do is laugh because that’s what she’s doing and it’s contagious. And it’s loud. Loud enough you think it will bring the kid down from his room, where he retreated after supper. But his music must be louder. You can hear the rumble of the bass, the occasional high-pitched shriek of a guitar. It’s enough to cover the sound of your gasp when Lisa kisses you.

She’s the one who says _sorry_ and separates you. And you turn away, almost, before turning back.

There’s no fight here, no pushing or pulling, no tug of rope despite the destroyed towel. It’s unlike anything you had with Dean. Or anyone since.

See, you always say you like a challenge.

Lisa’s lips were soft, tentative. But her eyes were open. Was that challenge enough?

You move in slow, watching her face for any signs that tell you to back off. You map the contours of her wide eyes, the slope of her nose, the pale red lines of her lips like a road on a map that goes nowhere but back to where it started.

You go back to the start of this. Not so far. A mayfly’s flight backwards.

You start over with a second a kiss. A second chance to touch her. And you don’t think about how you’re touching the woman Dean Winchester may have touched. You don’t think of what his hands did to her. You remember her hands on you in the living room, earlier. You think about what yours can do.

____________________

The ceaseless thunder of Ben’s stereo covers your tracks as you and Lisa walk up the stairs and down the hall.

You lay her on her own bed and she brings you to her.

Her fingers twist and twirl your curls as you kiss and kiss. Light, then deep. A bite to tease, and lick to soothe. With your lips, but without words, you count the freckles on her nose. You don’t compare them to Dean’s.

She tastes the column of your throat. You tongue the coil of her ear.

Your shirt rides up and she pushes it past your breasts. Braless, you are exposed to her. But she covers you, her mouth fitting over each swell, her tongue drawing up over each nipple. Back and forth, until they’re peaked and tender, wet with her saliva.

Between your legs, you ache and burn. When you move, the slide of your inner lips against each other makes you want to touch yourself. She rolls her hips, and you want more of that. You feel the heat coming off her, and want to know if the damp is seeping through her underwear too. You want to slide your fingers into her, feel her wetness. You want, you want. So eager, but you take your time.

She tugs your shirt over your head, tosses it to the floor, playful grin with faint moonlight playing off it in the dark room. You mimic each other: top to bottom, you then her, removing every last piece that gets in the way until you’re naked with nothing left between you.

With the lights out, she is all shadowed skin, dark hair fanning out from her head, dark hair trailing in a narrow strip over the mound of her pussy. You trace it, trimmed hairs bristling against your fingertip. Then you twist your wrist and push in. She envelops you in warmth, and you slip in deeper, pull out and retrace her outer lips. You crook your finger until your knuckle bumps the hood of her clit. Her belly jumps, so you do it again, and again. The slickness eases your circling movements, moves you on and you pick up pace until the sticky staccato of skin gets as loud as her breathing.

Your hand is tired by the time she comes, the flesh on your fingertips wrinkling. But when she comes, her neck arches long and her back lifts, drawing her body upward like a taut bow.

You want to document this: this moment when Lisa lets go. You wonder if she’s still Lisa in that moment. Or something that has no name, no alias to go by, something truer.

But you’re thinking too much. That’s what she says, as she pushes up from the bed and pushes you back. With her toes curling into the pillows and your head where your feet should be, she spreads you wide and bends over you. She licks the inside of your right thigh, the inside of your left. You squirm each time. It makes her smile. You want to squirm more for her, for that smile, for the sensation that precedes it.

Her fingers comb through the thick hair you haven’t shaved in months — not caring, not minding until now. You want to say something about it, but she doesn’t seem displeased. She cups her hand over your unshaved pussy and rubs.

When you masturbate, you flick yourself off fast and hard. When someone eats you out, you like their lips tight around your clit, sucking quick and dirty, pulling blood to the surface, leaving you sore later.

But Lisa rubs at you, not getting her fingers where you want them most, only providing you with the sporadic spark that comes when your labia part enough for her to brush over your clit.

It drives you mad. You thrust your hips up for more. _Please, more,_ you want to say, but you’re biting your lip. And waiting, you’re waiting.

The build up is perfect, an exquisite escalation. Never straight up, not linear. The pleasure diminishes into a hum, hits and snares, quiets and quickens, until you’ve traded your teeth for your arm to fight back the moans that stay trapped in your throat.

Then her tongue is there, licking. The tiniest licks with the tip. But steady. Then Lisa’s fingers outline your vagina, barely slipping inside. Her tongue and her fingers find the same constant rhythm. Steady, steady on.

You come.

Jerking until your nerves settle, it seems to last forever. It doesn’t matter if it lasts a second. It matters how it feels.

How it feels when she coaxes you up, to the top of the sheets and under the covers, is something you don’t know. You have no words for this.

It goes against your profession, but sometimes you have to admit that language is deficient, it has a few missing pieces. Some words have yet to be found. Letters scattered and separated, searching for each other. Unborn, but not dead either.

You don’t know where this is leading, besides sleep.

But you’re here. You’re catching your breath.

And Lisa’s beside you, ghosting goodnights over your eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> • Title and cut text taken from Kristin Hersh's "Your Ghost."
> 
> • Written for [](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/profile)[**womenlovefest**](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/) : [We Love The Women That Fandom Hates](http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/tag/).


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